Support Staff - Martin Vickers - Materials and Inorganic Chemistry

Non-ambient crystallography In-situ crystallography Pharmaceutical polymorphism Phase ID

Contact Details tel: +44 (0)20 7679 1004 internal phone: 21004 email martin.vickers@ucl.ac.uk

Research Interests

The picture, above, is an old one of me (after a long day), surrounded by models of polymorphs of TiO₂. I am a Senior Research Associate for Inorganic Chemistry here in the department providing support for the department's X-ray instrumentation. I work closely with Dr Jeremy Cockcroft on wide applications of Powder X-Ray Diffraction (PXRD) and the development of PXRD equipment. This includes two Stoe StadiP transmission geometry systems, one with copper radiation, one with molybdenum. We have added a Cryojet to the copper for low temperature data collection while the molydenum source has a dedicated furnace (to 900°C)

Stoe StadiP (Cu) and Siemens D500 in their natural environment:

StadiP	D500

We also have a Siemens D500 and Bruker D4 and D8 "Bragg-Brentano" (BB) reflection geometry diffractometers. Although both styles are valued very highly, if one clicks here one can understand why we might favour the transmission (Stoe) machine over the more conventional BB systems.

Our SEM has long since died of old age, but I stll love the images we made while we had it:

let there be light	moon light, even

Interests to date include drug polymorphism investigations to establish crystallographic purity and posible structure of a variety of common-use drugs. This includes dynamic temperature diffraction and also overlaps with Prof. Sally Price's group studying this phenomenan from the computational side.

Past work has lead us into nanopartical studies and the first ever user-data collection from the new powder diffraction beam-line at the Diamond Light Source.

As an analytical tool, powder diffraction necessarily leads to an eclectic mix of topics and materials for study. Past examples include the Roman Sevso Silver, cladding on telephone cables, asbestos removed from buildings, cow shed cleaners, human bone/urinary calculi composition and antient Egyptian bronzes. I shall include information about the other diffraction sets in the department in due course.

Selected Publications. Seriously needs updating!

Refereed Articles

• Synthesis and characterisation of magnesium substituted calcium phosphate bioceramic nanoparticles made via continuous hydrothermal flow synthesis. A A Chaudhry, J Goodall, M Vickers, J K Cockcroft, I Rehman, J Knowles and J A Darr. J. Mater. Chem. 2008
• A detailed study of the variation in lattice parameter and structure with temperature and dilution in yttrium-substituted holmium hexachloro-elpasolite Cs₂NaY_1-xHo_xCl₆. R Sabry-Grant, M Vickers, J K Cockcroft. Zeitschrift für Kristallographie, 222, Is. 07, 356 (2007)
• Toward the Computational Design of Diastereomeric Resolving Agents: An Experimental and Computational Study of 1-Phenylethylammonium-2-phenylacetate Derivatives. Karamertzanis P.G., A.T. Hulme, P.R. Anandamanoharan, P. Fernandes, P.W. Cains, M. Vickers, D.A. Tocher, A.J. Florence S.L. Price. J. Phys. Chem. B. Vol 111 (19), 5326 (2007)
• Thermal properties of Si₁₃₆: Theoretical and experimental study of the type-II clathrate polymorph of Si. X Tang, J Dong, P Hutchins, O Shebanova, J Gryko, P Barnes, J K Cockroft, M Vickers, P F McMillan. Phys. Rev. B 74, 014109 (2006).
• The solvates of o-acetamidobenzamide. S A Barnett, D A Tocher and M Vickers. Cryst. Eng. Comm, 8, 313 (2006).
• Hydrothermal crystallisation of doped zirconia: An in situ X-ray diffraction study. F Lupo, J K Cockcroft, P Barnes, P Stukas, M Vickers, C Norman, H Bradshaw. Physical Chemistry Chemical Physics, 6, 1837 (2004).



Web Articles

• Drug polymorph investigations (see Experimental Reports). many of these patterns have been submitted to the International Centre for Diffraction Data for inclusion in the Powder Diffraction File

Teaching

3001 M16 Powder X-ray Diffraction: 3rd year Taught Research Practical.
Link to Applied Chemical Crystallography / Industrial Materials Group web pages

This page last modified 6 November 2008

University College London
Department of Chemistry
United Kingdom
T: +44 (0)20 7679 1003
F: +44 (0)20 7679 7463
e: chemistry@ucl.ac.uk